


We're swimming with the sharks until we drown

by astralplanewife



Series: You've got a war, but who are you fighting for [1]
Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations
Genre: Angst and Humor, Autism Spectrum, Autistic!Mitsuki, Bad Decisions, During Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-09-17 15:09:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16976913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralplanewife/pseuds/astralplanewife
Summary: So, what's Mitsuki up to in the Land of the Earth? He's hanging out with his fun new friend(s?) of course. Sadness: Whomst? Regret: Don't know her. Mitsuki has 100% reinvented himself and feels absolutely no emotional connection to his old Konoha friends anymore.Or, that's at least what he tells himself a mere(non-obsessive) 5 times/minute!





	1. We're winning 'til the curtain's coming down

**Author's Note:**

> so I wrote more silly(/angsty) Boruto fanfic! This one is even supposed to be slightly canon compliant, even if a lot in it is just speculation! It's supposed to take place somewhere during Mitsuki's stay with the artifical humans/golem CRIME gang, and I might continue this fanfic later on as the arc continues in the show.  
> EDIT(3/1-19): I'm definitely making this a multichapter(i think!). stay tuned!  
> beta read by @reaperduckling  
> title from "vegas lights" by panic! at the disco

For the first time since Mitsuki decided to ~~betray his friends~~ go to the Land of the Earth, he finally felt like he had started to fit in a bit. Sure, most of the other synthetic humans/golems(?) were really stand-off-ish and rude, but at least he had one friend. It was much more convenient to focus on that, rather than on all the small, little, puny, and frankly insignificant uncountable amount of _things_ that felt _off_ about this situation.

“It’s really like you’re one of us now, the uniform looks great on you! It’s a shame that you’ll soon have to di- _I mean_ , it’s a shame that you only got your new outfit just now!” Sekiei said, coughing a little bit at the end.

"Hm," Mitsuki said. He felt like Sekiei wasn’t _really_ about to say that, but was instead _lying_. But why would Sekiei lie to Mitsuki for _any reason_? Technically there were lots of reasons, but Sekiei did seem like the _most_ trustworthy out of the bunch and it’s not like Mitsuki had any other options right now anyway. He had made sure of that even if he r _eally_ didn’t want to think about that right now.

“Uh, Mitsuki, what kind of facial expression are you making right now? I don’t recognize it. It kind of looks like you’re sad,” Sekiei said, head tilted to one side.

 “What? Me? I am _not_ making any facial expressions at all right now. In fact, humans usually reprimand me because of my _lack_ of those.” Mitsuki said, trying his best to be teachable and not sound defensive. It worked somewhat. It was great that Sekiei(and the rest of his gang, anyway) always avoided eye contact because Mitsuki _sure_ didn’t feel like making it right now(or any time, anyhow) for _no_ reason in particular.

"That's great! I've heard that feeling sad… isn't as great!"

“I wouldn’t know, but _I guess_ you could say that," Mitsuki said, somehow wanting to put an end to this conversation without understanding why. Talking to Sekiei was _great_ (for lack of a better word), his inability to understand basic human emotional concepts made Mitsuki feel all the better about his own ineptitude. It also confirmed that he wasn’t alone in struggling with that.

It was better and _less_ confusing to stick to his own kind, anyway.

-*-

_“Did you hear about what happened? It really shocked me!”_

_Boruto’s voice snapped Mitsuki out of what now just seemed like a daydream. He found himself sitting in Thunder Burger, as usual, with the rest of Team 7. It seemed like it had been a long since they had last hung out there, but when he really thought about it, they usually came here every day after they had completed their mission of the day. Anyways, Mitsuki decided, as usual, to let Boruto and Sarada do the actual making conversation part of hanging out so that he could just listen to them and feel companionable._

_“Boruto, I was right there when it happened, I don't need to_ hear _about it. And it’s nothing to make fun of!” Sarada smiled, adjusting her glasses._

_“I still don’t understand why he did it though. I’ll have to ask him.” Boruto said, taking another bite of his burger._

_"I don't know either. But I trust your judgment, sort of." Sarada said, and then her mouth kept moving for a little bit, but no sound came out. That was weird._

_“Pardon?” Mitsuki said. He must just have missed what she had said._

_Sarada(and Boruto, for that matter) completely ignored him. They kept on talking about this apparently_ shocking _thing that someone they knew had done, only that their lip movements and facial expressions didn’t match up with their actual words at all. Like they were actually having a completely different and happier conversation than what Mitsuki was hearing. Slowly, he also noticed that the windows in Thunder Burger that usually showed a busy street outside had gone completely pitch black._

 _This was getting_ really _weird._

 _“Is this a dream?” Mitsuki asked them exasperatedly but expecting no answer. But an answer came, in that Boruto’s face started twisting_ horribly _in a way that for a short second made Mitsuki think that he was looking into a mirror. But that wasn’t it, Boruto started growing long black hair and turned into-_

And then Mitsuki woke up from yet another _annoying_ dream. He decided to stop wearing winged eyeliner for the time being, as to not exaggerate his familial resemblance to Orochimaru even more. Maybe if he just refused to think about his fears, feelings, and _fears about feelings_ it all would just go away. Maybe.

-*-

 “Look, I drew you again! In this one, I drew you picking your nose. It’s a very _human_ part of body language or so I’ve _heard_.” Sekiei said excitedly, shoving a paper in Mitsuki’s face yet again for what felt like the third time this day (although, it was a bit hard to tell the days apart as the lack of sunlight in the cave system made everything just sort of float together).

 It was _also_ not a very good drawing, but Mitsuki decided not to focus on that.

“Yes, that is common human behavior. At least Boru- _I mean_ , someone I _used_ to know did that a lot.” Mitsuki said wisely, without sounding suspicious _at all_.

“When you say _someone_ , do you mean Boruto?”

“ _No_ ," Mitsuki said, quickly turning around and walking away. Then, he remembered that there wasn’t any use walking away because he didn’t know the cave system yet and would just get lost. He should really know it by now though, ~~in case he needed to quickly plot his escape~~ just because it was common sense, but he didn’t. So he turned around again and walked back to exactly where he had been standing originally.

“Is pacing back and forth a thing that humans do a lot? In the psychology book I’ve been reading it says that pacing back and forth is a common symptom of what’s called _anxiety_ ,” Sekiei asked innocently.

“That must be a typo. I don’t feel anxious at _all_.” Mitsuki quickly said, wiping his sweaty palms on his shirt sleeves.

 Sekiei gave him what was probably supposed to be a thumbs up, only that it was sideways. Mitsuki didn’t have the heart to correct him since he at least got the _gist_ of it.

-*-

While Mitsuki _told_ Lord Ku that he simply didn’t know why he didn’t just talk to his parent about his concerns, he _kind of_ knew even if he didn’t want to even think about it. It felt like a secret that was too shameful to ever be spoken of.

Because honestly, his parent scared him sometimes. Mitsuki had an _inkling_ of a feeling that it wasn’t _really_ normal to feel afraid of their parent, but what did it matter anyway if he just kept ignoring it.

 

 


	2. Ain't it so perfect

While the fabrications were all busy staging their coup d’etat of the Hidden Rock Village, Mitsuki sat at their cave hideout staring into a wall for an unclear amount of time. It _would’ve_ been fun had not the silence forced him to actually think about how things were progressing so far.

  1. The fabrications were clearly up to no good. Mitsuki wasn’t sure if becoming an accessory to an extremely ruthless criminal organization really had turned out that wise of a move. While he _had_ stopped them from murdering a guard that one time in Konoha, he was extremely unsure if he could stop them again. People would undoubtedly get hurt because Mitsuki got involved. That was a fact. But nevermind all that!
  2. Even though he had made an extravagant show of pushing Boruto away by electrocuting him, it turned out that completely turning off how you feel about someone is a lot harder than just hurting them ~~(really really really really really really really really)~~ badly and then trying to not think of them for a long period of time. Well, at least Boruto was probably back in Konoha by now, along with Sarada. In safety, _probably._
  3. The doctor who had examined Mitsuki was _mega bonkers_ creepy. Which was really saying something as he was already pretty used to being in unusual medical settings, what with being born out of a lab tube and all. When Mitsuki was being examined, the doctor had kept fiddling with sharp-looking scalpels and whispering what sounded suspiciously like _“Soon”_ to himself under what he probably thought was well under his breath. Mitsuki didn’t really have an opinion on this yet because his brain wouldn’t let him think about it for more than two seconds at a time. And with all that in mind, let’s quickly move on to the next point!
  4. He kept having pseudo-symbolic nightmares that would probably lead to an untrained eye assuming that Mitsuki felt some sort of _“regret”_ concerning the past events and/or actions that had led him here. This was completely _ridiculous_. Completely, extremely, and _utterly_ ridiculous. It was simply not true at all.



Well, all of that _thinking_ and _feeling_ certainly was irrelevant! But it was all that came to mind staring at an honestly kind of uninteresting wall(as walls went), so the previous list played on endless repeat in Mitsuki’s mind ~~slowly driving him nuts,~~ almost like a person who felt guilty about something! Wasn’t _that_ weird?

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave me kudos and comments if u like this.... I will keep on writing as the show progresses,,,,,


	3. Where villains spend the weekend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitsuki realized that what he was doing was really, really dumb.
> 
> Extremely, ridiculously dumb.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh just trying to make sense of the canon source material, guys

Plot twist: Somewhere while staring at the soon-to-be forced heart donor patients through a window for _hours_ and then mixing it up a bit by staring into walls(also for _hours)_ , Mitsuki realized that what he was doing was really, really dumb.

Extremely, _ridiculously_ dumb.

The awful anxiety that he felt all of his time spent awake, the symbolic night terrors haunting him when he was asleep, the Fabrications painfully obvious evil-ness apparent in every corner of their home base, and the lack of progress on Mitsuki’s own internal problems in general had all been signs of this whole spectacle being, simply put, a very _bad_ idea.

He needed to make things right, but he was in too deep to make a clean break. But that served him right, he supposed.

-*-

“…remember, you will be a part of Team 7 no matter what happens. When we’ve gotten home to Konoha and have all this mess sorted out I really want to talk to you about what made you run away in the first place. A judgment-free zone where we can just _talk_. I want to help you,” Konohamaru-sensei said earnestly.

“I don’t know if I can explain it. It’s kind of a long story,” Mitsuki said.

Konohamaru-sensei chuckled.

“ _Pfft_ , I think you’d be hard pressed to find _any_ shinobi that doesn’t have at least _one_ ‘kind of a long story’ under their belt. Emotional baggage is extremely common in this line of work. Hey, let’s say that you can _try_ to explain and I _promise_ to listen. Does that sound good?” he said, holding his fist out like he was expecting Mitsuki to do something with it.

It sounded really great, but Mitsuki did not understand _at all_ what he was supposed to do with Konohamaru-sensei’s outheld fist, so he simply responded with saying:

“They have lots of prisoners from the Hidden Rock Village here, I can draw you a map of their locations. I have completely memorized the layout of their base by now.”

Konohamaru-sensei looked at him with an unreadable expression and then lightly bumped his fist to the left side of Mitsuki’s chest, where his heart was.

“Sounds great! I’ll handle things here, and you can go do what you need to do.” Konohamaru-sensei smiled and put his mask on again.

-*-

Getting the decoy “heart” to Lord Ku was kind of hard. Not physically, but emotionally. Both Sekiei and Kirara were both buzzing with nervous excitement, and Mitsuki had to force his own slightly different brand of nervousness down and put on an emotionless front.

“When we’ve got our new hearts and are finally human, will you stay here, Mitsuki?” Sekiei asked.

The guilt hit Mitsuki like a bullet to the gut. He couldn’t bring himself to even _look_ at Sekiei right now.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, diverting his eyes to the ground and mumbling out the words.

“Of course he will! He’s one of us now!” Kirara said while pointing at Sekiei with her parasol for extra flair.

"Huh, you think so too now? At first, you all wanted to dissect-uh, I mean, _discuss_ with, uh, Lord Ku if Mitsuki would be allowed to stay or not!” Sekiei said, stuttering a bit in the middle of his sentence.

While Mitsuki finally saw through that obvious, obvious lie (the Fabrications had obviously been planning on killing him to do research ~~on his carcass~~ on _him_ and had only changed their plans because of the curse mark), he still felt like his own lies were worse somehow.

He _really_ had gotten himself in too deep this time around. It almost felt impossible to solve, but he was at least going to _try_ for _once_ in his life. Just nonchalantly going through the motions and not caring about consequences was in the past now. He owed his friends, _all_ of them, at least that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please leave me kudos if you like this and comment if you want to! :D


	4. Would you change it if you could?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the end of this fanfic! I've decided to make this a prequel to another one of my fanfics where I deal with the Mitsuki-Orochimaru relationship in depth seriously so I'll link to that one if you wanna read further!

As ~~nothing went as planned and everything turned out awful~~ Mitsuki liked to think of himself as a glass-half-full person. Betraying the fabrications and the subsequent fight(s) that had ensued hadn’t gone _that_ badly, really. The only ~~really really really really really really really~~ bad thing that had happened was that Sekiei had died. Nothing much, _really_ really, Sekiei had just crumbled into dust in front of him and that was that. Right now, Mitsuki had more important things to focus on. ~~~~

Like making sure Boruto and Sarada didn’t get turned into minced meat by Lord Ku! That was definitely a very important thing to prevent. If he just focused on that he wouldn’t feel sad at all.

-*-

In the end, Lord Ku exploded into an explosion and Mitsuki had nothing left to distract himself with. When the reality of the mess of a situation he had put himself in finally started to sink in he felt very sad, which was _uncomfortable_ to say the least. Human emotions were something that Mitsuki found interesting only when observing in others and not something he actually liked feeling himself. Too _messy_ , 0/10, wouldn’t recommend under any circumstances.

Maybe dying a hero’s death in battle and then being replaced with one of his comparatively innocent clone brothers would have been for the best after all, Mitsuki thought to himself. But then he realized that sort of thinking was the _exact_ _opposite_ of taking responsibility for his actions. So instead he thought about what he would do after he’d be inevitably banished from Konoha.

Come to think of it, going back to his parent was an option. Pretty much the only option he had, anyway. His parent wasn’t _that_ bad, right? It wasn’t like they could do anything worse to him than they had already.

…

Ok, maybe going back to his parent felt extremely wrong and bad and awful and all those other _negative_ words, but what other choice did he have?

-*-

Being in solitary was boring. Being in questioning was painful like being raked over the coals again and again.

“Well Mitsuki, we have no more questions to ask and you’re free to leave. From what I’ve been told, you’re going to lose your genin status but you’re not banned from the village,” Mr. Sai said.

“Uh, I’m going to have to talk to Lord Hokage about that. Maybe he’ll reconsider and Team 7 will be once more,” Konohamaru-sensei said.

Mitsuki had to think for a second.

“I think… I’ll go back to my parent. There’s just one thing I have to do first,” Mitsuki said while getting up and walking out of the room. Before he could leave, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“You decide what you want to do, but you’re always welcome to visit. If you want to! Just wanted you to know that,” Konohamaru-sensei said slightly desperately.

Mitsuki nodded. He’d decide that later. Right now, there was only one thing left to do.

-*-

Burying what was left of the Fabrications felt like closure. Unexpectedly talking to Boruto(and Sarada) one last time was _supposed_ to be like closure but turned out more like:

“-so what you’re saying is you really still want to be friends. Just checking.”

“Yes, Mitsuki, for the hundredth time, we’re still friends! The best of friends, even! The kind of friends that tell each other everything! Hint, hint.” Boruto said in a mix of joyous and exasperated while paying for a can of soda from a street vendor.

“Yeah! So, Mitsuki, what are you going to do now that we’re not genin anymore?” Sarada asked.

Mitsuki didn’t have to think even for a second.

“I’m going to stay here, and we’ll just have to take the genin exams again. I’ll even defeat Shino-sensei again if I have to.”

“What, did you actually defeat him? How? Shino-sensei is _super_ strong and I’m assuming that you fought him alone since this is the first I’ve heard about this,” Sarada said incredulously.

“I used my Sage Power, what else would I do?”

Boruto spat out the soda he had just started sipping on.

“What? You mean the _glowy_ thing you did when we were fighting Lord Ku? I thought I was just seeing things from hitting my head on rocks a bunch of times! That’s super cool, Mitsuki!” Boruto fanboyed while waving his arms around (and spilling soda all over the ground).

“Watch where you’re throwing that soda, Boruto!” Sarada admonished him, just like old times.

_Just like old times._

…

Ok, maybe not _everything_ was all that much better. There was still the overall guilt, the fear ~~(of his parent)~~ , and dozens of scary unresolved issues that Mitsuki would probably have to deal with later(even if he didn’t want to). But in this moment, he could at least feel safe in that his friends were still his friends and if he kept focusing on _that_ maybe it really could be just like old times, _but better._

Even if it was just for a moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments are greatly appreciated.


End file.
